Kiraz Chronicles Archive

The Book of Crowns on the Kings of Himyar, or Kitāb al-Tīgān as it is known in its original Arabic title, is a pre-Islamic collection rich with lore and myth by Wahb ibn al-Munabbih.

The city of Mosul in northern Iraq, some 396 km (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad, is today a central point in the political struggles of Iraq. This three-volume set is the most comprehensive history of this historical city ever written. The first volume covers the political history of the city, the second volume covers the cultural history of Mosul, and the third volume is a comprehensive survey of the archaeology and art of the city.

The venerable work of Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Shabushti (d. c. 1000), “The Book of Monasteries,” has come to hold an acclaimed status among scholars of early Arabic Christianity. Thoroughly annotated and cross-referenced, this Arabic edition by George Awwad is more than simply a catalogue of monasteries, it is a view into the culture of early Christianity as it developed in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Arabia.

A fine example of Arabic science, Shams ed-Din abu-Abdullah Muhammad al-Dimashqi’s Cosmography has almost been forgotten by the Western world. Translated into French by A. F. Mehren, this important historical text will now be widely available.

Published for the first time in this book is the History of the Governors of Egypt by Abu Umar Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Kindi (d. 870). Edited from a single manuscript by Nicholas Koenig, this study is as close as possible to a critical edition when only one manuscript survives.

An early example of Islamic history, the Kitab al-ma'arif (“Book of Knowledge”) of ibn Qutayba (ibn Coteiba) has a prominent place. Born in Kufa, in present-day Iraq, ibn Qutayba was a teacher in Baghdad and he was among the first formal historians. This particular work ambitiously covers topics from the beginning of creation and facts about the period before the appearance of Islam (jahiliyya) to the names of the companions of the prophet Mohammed, famous jurists and masters of the oral tradition associated with the prophet (hadith). Presented here in the original Arabic, along with an introduction by Wüstenfeld, this early manual of history is sure to be of interest to anyone considering Islamic outlooks from the ninth century.

A representative of the Arabic genre known as “futuh reports,” The Conquest of Syria remains an important historical source although it is now recognized not to be the work of Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Omar Ibn Waqid al-Aslami (called al-Waqidi). This Arabic document, part history, part romantic reconstruction of the past, is one of the main sources narrating the Muslim conquest of Syria. A window into the world of early Muslim self-perception, these documents are a valuable historical source in the sense of being period pieces. Here the Arabic text is presented along with the partial notes and comments of W. Nassau Lees, a noted writer on Eastern culture.

The “Institutes of Akbar,” or Ain-i-Akbari, are an unconventional history of the 16th century reign of Akbar the Great of the Mughal Dynasty. Ain-i-Akbari is actually the third volume of a much larger Persian document, the Akbarnama composed by Abuul Fazl. Ain-i-Akbari itself is a three-volume work, and the material offered in this set represents the first volume of that three-volume work. Included in this collection are the original Persian text, and the English translation of Heinrich Blochmann.

The incomplete manuscript known by the title Book of Highways and Kingdoms was an ambitious undertaking by Abu Ubayd Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Bakri, an eleventh-century Spanish-Arab geographer who never left al-Andalus. Relying on what he read and what travelers reported to him, al-Bakri composed a substantial reference work describing the geography, climate, people and customs of the world he knew, constructing what was to become a medieval manuscript of renown. Presented here in the original Arabic, and divided into two volumes for convenience of use, this chronicle will be welcomed by medievalists and others interested in the perception of the world in the 11th century.

The monk Florentius of Worcester compiled several chronicles and other sources, here translated into English. It is an independent source for Anglo-Saxon history, and a contemporary source for the Normans.